Aim! Shoot!! Duck!!!

So here’s a post that talks about something other than Transformers  .  I’ve actually wanted to post more about gaming for a long time but found that I didn’t have enough time to play games nowadays. Usually by the time I have the mood to play, the game would have been out for months or maybe even years, so no point to blog about it anymore.

I’ve always told Nick Wong, the one game that would make me buy a PS3 is Gran Turismo 5. So when it was finally released Nov 2010, a PS3 was on top of my Wanted List. Finally I made the plunge at end of Dec 2010 after finding a good deal with GT5 together. No I didn’t get the GT5 themed Blue PS3 as I didn’t feel the cut in HDD space was worth it.

Ok, back to GT5. I’m sure most people are familiar with Gran Turismo racing simulator games by now. Most would have tried it in some form from the 1st 2 games on the PS1 to the next 2 games on the PS2. There’s a new feature in GT5 that was updated in Feb 2011 which is the highlight of this post, Remote Racing.

First of all, a very brief intro into GT5. There are 2 driving modes in GT mode, A-Spec & B-Spec. A-Spec is where you yourself are the driver & driving in the races. B-Spec is where you let the AI drive for you. B-Spec was introduced in GT4 but here in GT5 it has been expanded to become more similar to a driver management mode. Instead of just one B-Spec driver, you can have up to six, each leveling up independently of each other with you managing them. Then the A-Spec race events are duplicated for B-Spec & you get awarded a different prize car for completing an event in B-Spec. B-Spec races are also usually longer than A-Spec in terms of laps & B-Spec drivers take forever to level up in experience. This is when Remote Racing becomes useful.

Remote Racing is a feature that allows you to run races on your PS3 remotely using a web browser. Before you start using this feature, your B-Spec level have to be at least 16. Then you’ll need to share online at least one of your B-Spec driver. Next you need to have a friend that also has GT5 & for him to also share online his B-Spec driver.

You can start a Remote Race on the PS3 itself & monitor it through a web browser in www.gran-turismo.com. You can also start it from the web browser in www.gran-turismo.com. In www.gran-turismo.com, look for the link ‘GT5 My Home’ on the top right corner & sign-in with your PSN login.

Gran Turismo Website

My Gran Turismo Home

To start a Remote Race on the PS3, you’ll find it under “Community” in GT Mode. Enter that, select an event, then select your driver & a friend’s driver & click on Start Race. Unfortunately you can’t start a race with just your own B-Spec driver, you must add at least a driver from a friend. If you’re hosting the race, you can only add ONE of your own B-Spec driver to the race but you can add all the B-Spec drivers of your participating friends. During the race, you can only spectate it & not issue any B-Spec race commands to your driver.

To start a race from your ‘GT5 My Home’ page in www.gran-turismo.com, you’ll first need to start Remote Race on your PS3, then select ‘Enter Server Standby Mode’ instead of choosing a race event. Then you can go to your ’GT5 My Home’ page & click the big ‘Remote Race’ button in the middle. From there it’s similar to how you start a race on a PS3.

Select an Event!	List of Previous Races
Previous Race Result	Start a new Race!

Race in Progress!!

Remote Racing gets it’s own set of events so running remote race doesn’t add to the completion of the game career mode. You also don’t win car prizes but you do win credits. You can’t choose what car your driver gets as it’s randomized. Sometimes it’s annoying as the cars picked for a race aren’t all even so you can get a lousy car. This mode is meant to help level up your B-Spec drivers & your friends B-Spec drivers at the same time, with credits as an extra incentive. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if you win the race or not, it’s more important to get the experience & credits. 

Remote racing in www.gran-turismo.com has been tested to be working on a Nokia N8 with the default Symbian & Opera Mobile 11 browser, and also on the iPhone. Though I didn’t get a chance to test on Android devices, I’m pretty sure that works as well. Special thanks to Chronozome (aka Chronozoid) for allowing me to include him in the post 

Transformers War For Cybertron PC

Having finished the campaign & played some multiplayer, I think it’s time for me to give my final thoughts on this superb game. Continuing from my initial impressions, I have to say I wasn’t disappointed with the rest of the game. But of course, nothing is perfect.

The Good

- The story of the game. For G1 fans, this is what you’ve been waiting for, to be there on Cybertron, before the Great War brought the Transformers crashing down to earth.

- Non stop action. Ok let me make this clear first. This is a 3rd person action game. The best way to describe it is Gears of Wars but with Transformers & no cover system.  But transforming into alternate mode is not a gimmick, instead it’s something useful when dealing with bosses, namely, dodging the bosses annoying attacks. The non stop action doesn’t let up & makes you wanna keep going to see what happens next.

- A campaign mode that can be played co-op with other players. Makes the whole team game in the game more real. But it’s with it’s faults which I will get to later.

- Very enjoyable Escalation multiplayer mode. It’s basically a mode where you & a group of players face wave after wave of ever more powerful enemies. As fun as playing the Marines & defending against waves of Aliens. It’s the same concept.

- Great voice acting & dialogue. Hearing Peter Cullen as Optimus really sends chills down my spine. The rest of the crew does a great job as well & the humour is always entertaining.

- Very climatic & jaw dropping boss fights. Well, granted it’s really the last bosses that are the ones that are amazing. Namely Omega Supreme & Trypticon. Trypticon is a very very tough cookie to beat & you might find yourself cursing the game because of it.

The Bad

- This is an action game folks, so it’s as simple as that. No experience system, non upgradeable weapons. You basically can carry only 2 weapons at any time & the only strategy you ever need is to maybe pick the right weapons to battle.

- It feels too much like a console port. Even though this game runs on Unreal Engine 3, the console origins can’t be more glaring. Very limited options menu. Can’t configure controls at all. Yeah, you read that correctly. No gamepad support. Worse of all, no text chatting support!!! I mean, this is a PC game for crying out loud!!!

- Unbalanced multiplayer mode. Newbies will be whacked to kingdom come if high level players are around in this game, sadly. And I’m one of the newbies that got that rude shock. It’s almost impossible to play against higher level players, be prepared to die a lot when you start out in multiplayer. This only applies to multiplayer, not Escalation mode.

- Online co-op mode that could have been better. Why? Because when any of the players die, you all get kicked back to the last savepoint. No respawn system. This gets very annoying when fighting bosses where one wrong step by a teammate means a restart of the boss fight. This is made worse by the non existent chat system. I gave up playing this when I reached the boss near the end of the Decepticons campaign.

- Should have a more fleshed out ending. Honestly, the ending feels a bit cut short to me. Oh well, it was great while it lasted.

- Too few maps for multiplayer & Escalation mode. But that’s going to change soon with the soon to be released DLC.

The Verdict

Play the campaign, enjoy it. Then go try Escalation mode. Honestly, it’s worth it!

Update! I have a new post with my final thoughts for this game here.  Below is my initial impressions of this great game.

Finally a Transformers based game arrives that impresses me enough to write my thoughts on. Transformers: War for Cybertron is not based on the movie or cartoon but instead tells the story that have never been told before. The war on Cybertron that started it all. This part of the Transformers mythology has never been fleshed out much, perhaps maybe in short parts here & there in the cartoon & movie, but that’s all I can remember. The game centers on the end part of the war, but covers stuff like Megatron’s reasoning for the war, Starscream’s defection to the Decepticons, how Optimus meet Bumblebee & Optimus becoming a Prime. But do keep in mind, the Transformers universe itself have a lot of different storyline depending on which series you follow, this one sticks more to the original Generation 1 cartoon.

Transformers War For Cybertron PC

When starting off the game, you can choose to start the Decepticons or the Autobots campaign but the storyline is set that the Decepticons campaign should be played first. Starting the Autobots campain first might leave you a bit confused as to what have happened. On initial play, the game didn’t really strike me as impressive, but from chapter 3 onwards the game picks up the pace & draws me in. From then on, I couldn’t stop playing & just had to see what happens next. This is helped by the added humour in the conversations happening at the same time.

Bumblebee & Optimus

When playing the campaign, you’re always in a 3 robot team, you choose which one of the 3 when starting a chapter & will use that same one till you finish the chapter. You can also choose to play the campaign with CPU controlled team mates or online with other people. I haven’t tried playing the campaign online yet with other people but if your teammates are CPU controlled they don’t sustain damage or die so no need to worry about them. I’ll try it online after I finish the campaign.

Megatron & Soundwave

The game runs pretty well on my gaming rig which is almost 3 years old now. I’m running it at 1600×900 resolution with details set on high on a AMD X2 5000+ processor, 4GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM & Nvidia 8800GT video card. Sounds pretty dated right? Haha. Sure there are slowdowns in some crazy sections but 95% of the time it’s smooth & that’s what matters most. Graphics wise, it’s quite intense in the sense that there’s so much happening in the background. There’s a war going on after all. But no it’s not Crysis so don’t expect any groundbreaking graphics here. The environments are a mix of corridors, hallways, huge rooms & some open space. In end part for the Decepticons campaign you have to face off Omega Supreme & you’re running for your lives until you can find something to damage Omega Supreme with. Now that was quite intense!

I Am Omega Supreme. Mission - Terminate Megatron.

I’ve finished the Decepticons campaign & have to say, I was left breathless at the end of the battle with Omega Supreme. I’m now a quarter through the Autobots campaign & all I can say is, I wanna rip me some Decepticons!!! To Transformers fans out there, you owe it to yourself to play this game. Purge your memory of all the old crap Transformers games you’ve played. The ultimate one is here, NOW. Available on the PC, Xbox 360 & PS3. The Wii & Nintendo DS editions are different games so I can’t comment on those. Credits for the screenshots used in this post goes to IGN. You can check out the IGN PC review of the game here.

I have a new post with my final thoughts for this game here.